Book Review | Exploiting My Baby

I am so excited to share my review of Exploiting My Baby: Because It’s Exploiting Me, my first experience with Teresa Strasser. She is an absolute riot. If you like to laugh, need to laugh, or want to laugh so hard that you almost pee your pants, read this book. I repeat: Read. This. Book.

I read this book on the beach and couldn’t stand to put it down long enough to shift with the moving sun. Strasser somehow turns her neuroses and her fears, worries, and complaints about her first pregnancy into an outrageous, rollicking journey, and does so with great deftness. While it is difficult to choose a particularly clever passage to showcase her writing skill and snarky sense of humor because just about every passage is particularly clever, this one tickled me something fierce. It can be found in the portion titled, “People I Want to Punch: Great Sleeper People,” which is a recurring segment in her book. “Here’s what you sound like, sleepyheads: “I sleep in the car! I sleep standing up! I sleep on a pile of coats at a party! I sleep while operating a jackhammer! I fall asleep on the toilet sometimes! I sleep in the break room at the office! Does coffee keep me up? Heck no. I enjoy a strong espresso after dinner every night and I nod right off. Sometimes, I actually hit my head right on the tiny mug.” That excerpt, especially the last part about the tiny mug made me giggle like a lunatic. Seriously. I couldn’t stop. I was borderline hysterical.

Exploiting My Baby is one of those books that you have to read portions of to whoever happens to be nearby, because you just have to share Strasser’s inimitable wit and wry perspective on, well, everything. I cannot recommend this book enough. You will giggle your way right out of your chair.

*I received a copy of this book to review but I was not financially compensated in any way. The opinions expressed are my own and are based on my observations while reading this novel.*